The campaign to leave the EU ahead of an in/out referendum next year has still to properly get going, but Nigel Lawson for one is not prepared to wait any longer. The former chancellor has announced he will lead a new group, Conservatives for Britain, which will campaign for a No vote and his first pronouncements in the post are typically uncompromising.
Staying in an unreformed EU, says Lord Lawson, would mean handing over ever more control of our economy and our borders to political bureaucrats whom we cannot vote out. He also refutes any suggestion of a risk to investment and jobs and predicts that any reforms that the British government does manage to weadle out of the EU will be wafer-thin. "The EU," says Lord Lawson, "is just not set up either to reform itself of to accommodate demands for power to be returned to its member countries."
There is some truth in Lord Lawson's argument, as well as some exaggeration; there are also signs of trouble ahead for the Conservative party. The Tories should be in a supremely powerful position at the moment – Labour is all over the place, the Lib Dems are almost non-existent, and the SNP have troubles of their own just now. But David Cameron's majority in the Commons is not large and the rebellious anti-EU stew on the Tory back benches require only the merest stir from the likes of Lord Lawson for it to spill over. Mr Cameron may not yet be facing the kind of travails John Major did in the early 1990s, but the day is not far off.
On the substance of his argument, Lord Lawson is right to draw attention to the systemic democratic problems of the EU. As the former chancellor acknowledges, the organisation was established for the best of reasons to reduce the chances of a repeat of the Second World War, but its structure is weighted far too much towards appointed bureaucrats and away from the parliament. Long-term confidence in the EU can never be consolidated until it becomes more accountable and democratic and responsive to its member states.
Lord Lawson's argument is that it will never do so and therefore we must leave; he also dismisses the chances of David Cameron achieving any kind of meaningful reform, and there is some justification for that. Partly because Mr Cameron has been bad at winning friends in Europe, the best he can hope for is limited change now with the promise of treaty reform at a later date.
However, the limited chances of reform for now do not fatally undermine the solid reasons for staying in the EU. Lord Lawson says the "in" campaign will try to scare people into voting Yes, but the argument for staying in is based on a solid economic foundation – quite simply, leaving would do tremendous damage to the domestic trade that Scotland and the rest of the UK does with the EU. There are also arguments about the damage leaving would do to Britain's political influence, particularly with America, but the economic argument is convincing: membership of the EU is good for the Scottish economy and Scottish jobs. It is that argument, despite Lord Lawson's warnings, that is likely to win the day.
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